>We have a need in my company to start processing credit cards. I've never dealt with this before so would love some help on my alternatives. I guess one issue would be with which company I contract to do the processing and the other issue would be what type of software to use.
You may try PayPal. They offer everything you need and have zero setup fee. You only pay a minimum of 35.00$ a month plus they take a percentage on each transaction. They also do not require you to be PCI compliance.
They provide a test interface you can use and a production environment when you are ready to make the switch. The only difference with them as oppose to a real payment full setup gateway service is that they will not deposit your payments at midnight into your banking account. This is something you have to do on occasional basis when you have a certain amount of money you are ready to move into your bank account. This can be irritating for auditing. Because, you end up with a lot of payments from a certain period which are not deposited into your bank account.
Other than that, for all my clients which require that type of service, I always refer them to PayPal. Because, they cannot afford to pay 500.00$ for setup fee which is what Moneris charges in Canada, another 200.00$ for being PCI compliance, with a company such as Trustwave, (which require you to fill about 300 questions and the process takes about three days) and additional little charges here and there which will show up on your monthly bank statement. With PayPal, they take 35.00$ from your credit card on a monthly basis and the percentage they take from each payment is already taken care of when this is deposited into your PayPal account.
It doesn't matter if you are on the Web or not. The process is the same. I have a class for that I can send you. This does it all. It is in VB.NET however but can easily be adapted to VFP. My payment class supports a Moneris gateway and a PayPal gateway for now. But, the main payment class redirects to the PayPal class when this is the type being used. So, basically, I can only send you the PayPal class and I am pretty sure you will find your way around it.
As for the basics, you would have to go on PayPal, create a merchand account, request the payment API and stuff like that. They will take a few days before they approve your request.
